Beginning to Breathe
by ncfan
Summary: Marcus ponders the nature of healing. Set during S3's "A Late Delivery From Avalon".


Disclaimer: I don't own Babylon 5.

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Marcus shakes his glass slightly, staring pensively into the mercury liquid within. The yellow spotlight lamps tremble slightly, throwing an almost sickly light all around. It is near closing time; the dingy bar in Downbelow is empty apart form a few down-on-their-luck stragglers and Marcus himself.

_Marcus isn't sure what to think as he stares into the man's glazed blue eyes. His face is fixed in a strange contortion, a cocktail mixture of shattering sadness and intense pain; his hands clench the sword Excalibur without any conscious thought of doing so. He's fallen into a living death; his eyes are open, he breathes still and the suggestion of murmured words linger around his lips, but his heart is cold, his skin clammy and chill._

_Looking at him, Marcus wonders one thing: _Is he Arthur or David?

_Marcus isn't sure anymore._

Witnessing him and his behaviors, Marcus could have well believed that the man was King Arthur. Despite the man's relatively slender stature, thinning, graying light brown hair and overall mild demeanor (most of the times), the man had an air of suffering, of love lost, of nobility that Marcus always expected him to have.

It was a dream Marcus always had, of King Arthur returning in his time, of some great savior who would appear out of the mists of time and Avalon to aid them in their darkest hour.

But that man who had just hours before laid on a hospital cot both alive and dead is not King Arthur Pendragon, High King of Britain and slayer of Saxons.

He is David McIntyre, just another man, who, like Marcus, has made many mistakes and watched them exact a terrible personal toll.

Marcus's mistake was the deaths of hundreds of innocent, unknowing people, dead to the Shadow's merciless onslaught on a small colony, because he did not believe and he did not listen. On Earth, he is dead to everyone who might care; simply another victim of an attack made by unknown aliens. A man whose body was never found.

David's mistake was to help ignite a war that should never been fought. He assumed the mantle of King Arthur in his subconscious (and Marcus will always wonder if David's shifting to Arthur was a gradual descent or if he just woke up one day changed into another life) and became Arthur, to possibly atone for the mistakes he made as David.

He tried, but ultimately his mind betrayed him once again. For the King's burden is every bit as great as David's pain. David has a gaping wound, a wound that refuses to heal, and it came into contact with Arthur's wound and everything just…exploded.

Though Marcus does not entirely agree with what Doctor Franklin has done, he does acknowledge that while Arthur could never heal, David can.

_David smiles, a strange, sad smile. "Maybe now…maybe now I can begin to heal."_

But what is healing, exactly? Marcus frowns, robbed of his usual good cheer.

Doctor Franklin seems to think that healing can be administered by medicine and machinery. His methods are well-meant, but ultimately ineffectual, because those things he uses have no soul.

Delenn and Lennier think that healing can be attained by means of ceremonies and the casting of candles into the long dark night. Marcus admires their fervency and their faith, but knows that healing isn't something that can be confined to a single time or place (Delenn decided to keep the sword, fascinated by the legend of Arthur and respectful and intrigued by what the sword itself represents).

Marcus doesn't know what Londo thinks healing is (and he's sure he doesn't want to know what the cynical, Shadow-darkened Centauri ambassador's opinions on this are), but he knows that Vir thinks that personal healing can only be given by another. Marcus suspects that maybe, Vir is trying to heal Londo, and if so, he has his work cut out for him. Good luck to the poor boy.

G'Kar does not believe in healing; he thinks that wounds should fester so that they madden the mind, make the spirit bleed all the more, thus allowing the bearer to hold a terrible presence and a breathtaking power.

Marcus has a different line of thought about healing.

To Marcus, healing is about forgiving yourself for the mistakes you have made.

Forgiving yourself is accepting that you have done wrong and accepting that life moves on, and you must as well.

Forgiving yourself is learning to breathe again, and to look at the sights around you with new eyes.

Forgiving yourself is coming to grips with the fact that you may never be the same again.

Forgiving yourself is not about forgetting your mistake; if you forget, you have learned nothing, accepted nothing.

Rather, forgiving yourself is about being able to go in front of a mirror and finding the strength to look your reflection in the eye again.

Forgiving yourself is being able to live with yourself again.


End file.
